Has a fine post up today:
Why America Needs Less Mindless Conformity
Think about it for a second. If you are in Washington, D.C.’s Republican/Democratic Establishment circles, it is considered nothing short of disgusting or fringe to think we should, for instance, set an exit strategy in Iraq, or renegotiate the corporate-written “free” trade deals that are wreaking so much havoc on our middle class. If you are in business, you are considered weird for keeping in mind anything other than the bottom line, no matter what laws and ethics you have to break. If you are in media, you are considered a freak if you suggest reporting on serious issues instead of Michael Jackson, if you suggest putting on air anyone other than the same tired, old, out-of-touch Beltway pundits who regurgitate the same idiotic talking points. But as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford tells us, conformity is exactly what the powers that be want – and is exactly what we shouldn’t give them.
I would add to that list that there are certain bloggers only too willing to tell us what we should all recognize as facts, what connections we should all make in this time of chaos. More with the Morford he links to below.
crossposted from Liberal Street Fighter
As Morford puts it:
Why Do You Work So Hard?
Is it maybe time to quit your safe job and follow your path and infuriate the establishment?
There remains this enormous and wicked sociocultural myth. It is this: Hard work is all there is.Work hard and the world respects you. Work hard and you can have anything you want. Work really extra super hard and do nothing else but work and ignore your family and spend 14 hours a day at the office and make 300 grand a year that you never have time to spend, sublimate your soul to the corporate machine and enjoy a profound drinking problem and sporadic impotence and a nice 8BR mini-mansion you never spend any time in, and you and your shiny BMW 740i will get into heaven.
This is the American Puritan work ethos, still alive and screaming and sucking the world dry. Work is the answer. Work is also the question. Work is the one thing really worth doing and if you’re not working you’re either a slacker or a leech, unless you’re a victim of BushCo’s budget-reamed America and you’ve been laid off, and therefore it’s OK because that means you’re out there every day pounding the pavement looking for work and honing your resume and if you’re not, well, what the hell is wrong with you?
It infects everything. It has disabled the Democratic Party as a party that is actually able to work for a world where people can pursue their happiness, where families and people and art and beauty and the environment matter. Even on blogs, this conventional wisdom seeks to silence inconvenient points-of-view, to bury people who’re making different connections between things than the accepted “reality based” connections.
Morford continues:
Our culture allows almost no room for creative breaks. There is little tolerance for seeking out a different kind of “work” that doesn’t somehow involve cubicles and widening butts and sour middle managers monitoring your e-mail and checking your Web site logs to see if you’ve wasted a precious 37 seconds of company time browsing blowfish.com or reading up on the gay marriage apocalypse.
We are at once infuriated by and enamored with the idea that some people can just up and quit their jobs or take a leave of absence or take out a loan to go back to school, how they can give up certain “mandatory” lifestyle accoutrements in order to dive back into some seemingly random creative/emotional/spiritual endeavor that has nothing to do with paying taxes or the buying of products or the boosting of the GNP. It just seems so … un-American. But it is so, so needed.
It is vital that the cultural left fight harder for a country where people CAN drop out to “follow their bliss”. Or to create something or just succor the needs of someone who needs help, without it always having to feed into the puritanism.
We are designed, weaned, trained from Day 1 to be productive members of society. And we are heavily guilted into believing that must involve some sort of droning repetitive pod-like dress-coded work for a larger corporate cause, a consumerist mechanism, a nice happy conglomerate.
But the truth is, God, the divine true spirit loves nothing more than to see you unhinge and take risk and invite regular, messy, dangerous upheaval. This is exactly the energy that thwarts the demons of stagnation and conservative rot and violent sanctimonious bloody Mel Gibson-y religion, one that would have all our work be aimed at continuously patching up our incessant potholes of ugly congenital guilt, as opposed to contributing to the ongoing orgiastic evolution of spirit.
Don’t let “them”, whoever they are, shout you down or shut you up or tell you you’re being silly. Believe something to be true? Then TEST it by writing or saying it, then engage with people who disagree with you. Be willing to reach out and touch an intellectual or spiritual hot stove. Be willing to be burned. LEARN from getting burned.
As Sirota writes:
In the movie “The Usual Suspects,” Kevin Spacey says “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Likewise, the greatest trick the insulated Establishment and Corporate America ever pulled was convicing ordinary Americans they can’t change things, they can’t make a difference, and they must become just another cog in a directionless corporate system that ignores anything other than the quest for profit and the desire to make more “things” (whatever they may be). It just isn’t true – and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we will be on our way to really addressing the fundamental challenges facing this country.
Our current political straits, and the ineffectual nature of the Democratic Party, is the continued blind acceptance of what “everybody knows”.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died — Leonard Cohen
Don’t give in to what everybody knows. Keep questioning. Keep making mistakes. Keep learning.
Your quote (song?) made me thing of that old Bruce Hornsby song – “that’s just the way it is.” But then he says “but don’t you believe it.” 🙂
I love that song….I need to go listen to that — haven’t in a while, not only does it make me mist up, but it reminds me of riding to work on the buses in Seoul (as I listened to it a lot on my walkman those days)…the sights and sounds in that city just reflect how much of the mindset that MitM is talking about has spread across the globe — like so many other big cities in so many other countries….
Then again, there was an woman who sold fresh peas on the corner that I bought from every day…my god, I love fresh peas, I think I can count the number of times I’ve had them since I moved to Texas on one hand….I tried to grow some and failed miserably…I was really sad about that. Oops, rambling again — that’s all I can seem to do today!
Madman, thank you for this diary! As someone who has been unemployed for the last 10 months (if trying to finish a dissertation and spending time with my kids is considered “unemployed”…), I really appreciate what you are saying here. The problem with us is that we CANNOT afford it (my not bringing in an income) — and, yeah, that pisses me off…
(slightly O/T)
You may or may not have heard the rap song that 2Pac did that sampled Bruce Hornsby’s song (2Pac’s is called ‘Changes’). It’s one of my favorites to this day, the lyrics are just amazing (and still relevant 10 years later). A few samples:
from Leonard Cohen – “I’m Your Man”. There is also a great cover of it on Pump Up the Volume by Concrete Blonde.
I am so with you on this topic!
I’ve always walked the road less travelled and love it out here. The change came for me when I was diagnosed with scleroderma, given 5-7 years to live back in 1991. It was crushing at first as i prepared to die, but I didn’t die. So i had to start living again.
I now treat my life and disease as a real GIFT.
My time is my time. Money is tight being on disability but one learns to make sacrifices-drugs over food or vice versa- etc.,
But my creativity DID kick in when my time became my own. I think it is the way it should be for us humans.
The other thing I realized and many other ‘retired’ people come to the conclusion is how did we ever find the time to work for others when managing and living our own lives is a full time job and much more fun?
Minimize your life and you will be happier-truly!
For putting together this beautiful diary. I’ve got nothing to say, but you inspired me to throw in this quote that I love:
“Puritanism – the haunting fear that somewhere, someone may be happy.” – H. L. Mencken
Actually I do have something to say – how come the movie industry is wondering why they’re not selling tickets? Gosh, is it possible that their greedy behavior has sucked all the fun out of it for those of us who have to pay to see movies? And how come the bottom line is the only focus of the media. In the good old days we had music and theater, now we’re modern, we’ve got profits!
I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning thinking of how much I really don’t want to have to work today….and along comes this diary. How ironic. Oh, and thanks for helping me to question my entire belief system too ;O) because there are two things that I see as defining who I am, first a father, and second a worker. Although I really see my ability to work like a dog as the one thing that drives everything else. It has become my identity, and God help you if you fail to notice just how hard I do work because I’ve also become one of the things I least admire in others, a martyr. Blechhh.
About five years ago I took a “risk” and attempted to start my own business. I thought it was what hard working, enterprising Americans are supposed to do. It lasted all of two years, with the final year consisting only of me desperately hanging on with stubborn tenacity to a misguided belief that I could “work” my way out of my troubles. Yeah. I tanked my credit in the process too, and still haven’t recovered from that part yet.
We live in a house that we can’t afford, also because of my stubborness to keep my kids in one place, a nice place that I think that they deserve, but which is sucking the life out of me. My wife is unemployed and hasn’t been able to find a job. I wish she didn’t have to work but those days are long since past.
The truth is that I am so damned tired of working all the time, and although people notice and pat me on the back for my efforts, that routine is getting old too I’m sure. Believe me, I’d much rather be skipping around the world’s oceans in a schooner, stopping only to resupply and do some odd jobs for cash and take in some of the local flora and fauna :O) Maybe someday, when the kids are grown, I’ll get a chance to make some of those dreams come true, but right now, it’s time to go to work.
Peace
I’m sorry that it bummed you out, but that you tried once and it didn’t work out doesn’t mean you can’t try again in the future. Easier said than done, I know.
I pursued my old career long past the time when it was clear my days were numbered. When I was laid off, I was crushed, and when the unemployment stretched on I got really depressed. I had to hit bottom, accept defeat and accept help from my family (and move back to the midwest … ugh). I jetisoned a lot of “stuff” that I’d accumulated, and part of me resents it, but I’m truly better for it. I’m doing a job I don’t much like now, but it’s only temporary while I do night school. Hopefully a career as a paralegal will be as interesting as I think it will be (nothing I like more than reading, sucking up info and writing), but I’m doing it for the right reasons, I hope.
Hang in there, and keep your eyes open for opportunities to step sideways into something that might make you happier.
Hey Madman, I’m back from work now. Your diary didn’t bum me out. It was great. Working on Sunday bummed me out. You know it used to be that if you wanted extra things, you did extra work. Now I at least, have to work extra just to keep up.
In any case, that schooner I was talking about is right below here :O)
and I DO see you waving from the bow.
You’ll figure out a way …
A few months ago I read the following quotes on a diary at MYDD and found them really powerful.
“Only if individuals have time that they can dispose of freely as they see fit can liberty be truly meaningful.” Walter Lippman said that free time was “the substance of liberty, the material of free will.” From Herbert Marcuse, “the reduction of the working day to a point where the mere quantum of labor time no longer arrests human development is the first prerequisite for freedom.”
And one of my all-time favorite sayings is by Gertrude Stein, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” So, my goal in life is to be a genius and I have disciplined myself to spend a lot of time doing nothing. Its “hard work” but I’ve gotten pretty good at it.
The range of acceptable discourse in this country is ridiculously narrow and is, if not caused by, at least exacerbated by media concentration and corporatism in general. That, I think, it is really what is so disturbing about the most recent purge “over there”.
As one rather import example, I would say the acceptable ideas about how the Iraq War can be protested and worked against needs to get a fresh infusion of new ideas. Maybe radical ideas. Maybe weird ideas. Maybe ideas from the Zapatistas or Argentina. But something to get people to express how they really feel about it and to let the government know enough is enough. We need to get off our blogs and into the streets – in one way or another.
From the renowned yacht builder L. Francis Herreshoff about the Victorian age:
The empoloyees in 1900 and the next few years were usually less than 200, [but] the production was great[….] It seems remarkable today that such a small crew of men could turn out so much work. You must remember, however that things were quite different then: the men went to work at seven in the morning and, excepting for the noon hour, worked right through to six at night[….] There were fewer holidays then […,] New Year’s, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Of course they worked all day Saturday.
The men of those days were strong and tough; sometimes after this 10-hour day they would work overtime at a slight increase in pay[….] Many of the men neither smoke nor drank and were as hard and muscular as athletes in training. They were able to work hard, and liked it; they could saw or plane continuously for hours without stopping to rest [….] I fear the mold they were cast in is lost and that we will never have such accomplishments again.
The workmen at this time were paid less than fifty cents an hour, generally, although the Herreshoff Company at that time was noted for its high rate of pay.
Yachtsmen classically describe this era as the golden age of yachting. That’s wrong. None of these remarkable men bought the products of their employers. The golden age of yachting came in the 1950’s and 60’s when men worked far more easily, wages rose dramatically, and sailing and yachting clubs became open to middle class people such as the tradesmen, factory workers and school teachers I grew up sailing with.
Contrast with this from small-time Yankee boat builder John Gardner, which seems as incredibly futuristict to modern working Americans as the previous quotation seems antiquated:
Now there’s a thought to slow the rightward drift of the conversation, eh?
Large yacht photo and quotations taken from Wooden Boat, An Appreciation of the Craft, 1982. Small boat photo, Mrs. Gooserock.
thanks for the unique window into another aspect of this whole question. Wasn’t there a rebirth of boatbuilding out of those times as well? I remember my dad building a simple flat-bottomed rowboat based on articles in crafts magazines when I was a little kid.
In response to a great comment on this post over at Liberal Street Fighter I was reminded of a interesting book review in Scientific American about how software designers represented a return of the idea of a craftsman, aritisans, into modern life. Think of people making and selling little software apps (or giving them away on sites) and doing it for the joy of creating and sharing what they’ve done. The whole open source thing, the possibilities of CAD/CAM technologies …
I hope we can get to a time when people can support themselves and their families by doing what they’re BEST at, and not just based on what someone is willing to pay them to do. It’s going to be hard.
Thanks for the picture of the schooner Gooserock. You see that tiny little speck behind the helm? Thats me.
It takes a lot of courage to be a nonconformist and to express unpopular views. You have to be willing to face ostracism sometimes.
But what you get in return is a greater sense of personal integrity and self-knowledge.
Thanks for this terrific diary.
Ah, and I, too, wish I didn’t have to work today and am tired of working all the time.